The Film

In this Inside Nature’s GiantsSpecial, the BAFTA-winning team battle through the night against a rising tide to explore the mysteries of the largest predator on Earth - the Sperm Whale.

Veterinary scientist Mark Evans and comparative anatomist Joy Reidenberg, pull out the whale’s enormous organs to reveal the secrets of this 45-foot deep-sea giant which stranded and died on Pegwell Bay in Kent in March this year.

Despite their enormous size, we know very little about Sperm Whales because their lives are normally hidden deep beneath the waves. The programme reveals how they can survive diving down thousands of metres for over an hour on one gulp of air in conditions that would freeze our blood and crush our bones.

As the team go inside the whale, biologist Simon Watt tracks whales in the Azores with modern-day Jonah, Malcolm Clarke, who gives him a sniff of his prized whale rectum samples and shows him the huge number of squid beaks in a whale's stomach.

Meanwhile, joined by diggers, trucks and a reluctant local tree surgeon, the team on the beach discover how Sperm Whales use the largest nose in creation to hunt Giant Squid in the dark.

And evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins digs out his copy of the King James Bible for a reading on Leviathan as he marvels at the gigantic teeth that have evolved in the lower jaw of a sperm whale.